223525 - Clean (Purge/Expunge/Compact) up All folders on exit (property of IMAP-account)

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 160281

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Gyles Harvey]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 Galeon/1.2.11 (X11; SunOS sun4u; U;) Gecko/20030713
Build Identifier: 


A very useful option in some old Netscape browsers, and in Outlook Express, is
an option to either:

- compact each folder when you leave it
or
- compact all folders when closing mail window.

This saves a great deal of manual compacting of folders when browsing through them.

A bug (Bug #160281) is open against mozilla for this feature, and it would play
very nicely with Bug #219214 requesting that Thunderbird check all folders on
startup.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Christian Emig]

I second this. Netscape 4.7x had this option, too.

It's quite usefull in the following scenario:
You read your Mails using IMAP at home, and you use your provider's
Web-interface it you are not at home. If you use many IMAP-Folders and only the
INBOX can be expunged on exit by Mozilla than you see quite old, deleted mails
when logging into the Webinterface.

Comment 2

[Philip Ross]

This is still an issue with Thunderbird 0.5a (20040105).

Another reason for getting this fixed is to free up space on the server when
deleting mail (particularly useful for people with mailbox quotas).

Surely this is a bug rather than an enhancement too? With the default settings
of moving deleted messages to trash there is no way of physically deleting
messages unless you manually go around compacting all your folders (including
the Trash folder).

Comment 3

[Danny Suls]

I really wish I could vote for this (is there a similar MailNews bug that I can
vote on ?).

I'm in the same scenario as Christian Emig, and this particular bug# is the only
major issue I'm experiencing regarding IMAP support in Thunderbird.

Comment 4

[Gyles Harvey]

(In reply to comment #3)
> I really wish I could vote for this (is there a similar MailNews bug that I can
> vote on ?).

Bug #160281

Comment 5

[Martin Petricek]

In thunderbird version 20040907 nightly build there is compaction of folders 
(seem to happen when you click on folder that might be compacted) and it's 
settable in preferences, BUT there is annoying confirmation box "do you want to 
compact all your folders... ". Option to turn off this box would be useful ...

Comment 6

[Shaun]

(In reply to comment #2) by Philip Ross
[SNIP]
> Surely this is a bug rather than an enhancement too? With the default settings
> of moving deleted messages to trash there is no way of physically deleting
> messages unless you manually go around compacting all your folders (including
> the Trash folder).

I must agree totally, I want it physically gone from my computer.  I have a
backup system (the autosave plugin since, for some reason, it is not native to
thunderbird) so when I delete I want it gone. 

With a lot of users the hard drive fills up with **** mail that is 'deleted' but
IS STILL THERE.  Make DELETE mean DELETE, or at least have the option of making
it so.

Good program, keep up the good work!

Comment 8

[Martin Petricek]

In version 3.0a1pre (2008021903), compaction of the folders seem not to be done at all by itself (I deleted all mails from one of the folders, I have setting to compact when it will save 100Kb of space, yet entire folder remained even when I moved in or out of the folder - approx 3MB large). I restarted TB multiple times, moved in or out of the flder, but nothing have triggered the compaction. At last, I have done it manually .... 

I think when the folder is emptied completely, it should be compacted instantly, as the compacting is then essentially just rewrite with an empty mailbox.